Mechanics of Soft Materials - Special Issue on Mechanics, manufacturing, and applications of active soft materials and structures
Special Issue on Mechanics, manufacturing, and applications of active soft materials and structures
Introducing our upcoming Special Issue entitled “Mechanics, manufacturing, and applications of active soft materials and structures.”
Guest Editors:
Giulia SCALET, University of Pavia, Italy
Silvia FARÈ, G. Natta Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Fabiana ZAMA, University of Bologna, Italy
Submission deadlines:
Opening date: January 2024
Closing date: January 2026
Guest Editor Biographies:
Giulia Scalet is Associate Professor of Structural Mechanics and Director of the Laboratory of Programmable Materials and Structures (ProMast Lab) at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture of the University of Pavia (Italy). She received a B.S. (2008) and a M.S. (2010) cum laude in Civil Engineering and a Ph.D. (2014) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Bologna (Italy). She has been a postdoctoral researcher at Ecole Polytechnique (France) and at the University of Pavia as well as assistant professor at the University of Pavia. She was awarded an ERC Starting Grant 2021 for the project CoDe4Bio (COmputational DEsign for 4D BIOfabrication: harnessing programmable materials for dynamic pre-clinical cancer models) and she is principal of the Scientific Cooperation Italy-Israel Project F2SMP. She won the “Junior Researcher Award 2022 in Mechanics of Solids and Structures” from the Italian Association of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, the “Actuators 2022 Best Paper Award” from MDPI Actuators, the “2020 Young Researchers Prize” in the Engineering sector, instituted by the 2003 Group for Scientific Research, the “Best PhD Thesis 2014 in Computational Solid Mechanics” Award by the Italian Group of Computational Mechanics, and the prize “Best Graduated Women of the Engineering and Chemistry Faculties of the University of Bologna” by Unindustria et al. in 2011. She visited several international institutions, among the others, the Texas A&M University (US), the University of Houston (US), and the RWTH Aachen University (Germany). She is and has been involved also in successful projects financed by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, Lombardy Region, and the Italian Interuniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology as well as in collaborations with companies. She is member of the 4D Printing Society’s Senior Board Directors. She is expert in smart material constitutive modeling, advanced computational mechanics for industrial applications, 4D printing, and fatigue modeling. She published over 30 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and several conference proceedings. Publications: 40+ articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings, 5 book chapters, 1000+ citations, and h-index of 18 (scholar database).
Silvia Farè obtained her Master of Science degree in Management and Industrial Engineering, and the PhD degree in Biomaterials, Politecnico di Milano (Italy). She obtained a Post-doc research Fellowship, then she was Research Assistant at the Bioengineering Department, Politecnico di Milano. From January 2005 to November 2014, she was Assistant Professor at the Bioengineering Department, then at the Department of Chemistry, Materials, and Chemical Engineering “G. Natta”, Politecnico di Milano. From December 2014 to March 2021, she was Associate Professor in Industrial Bioengineering at the Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano. From April 2021, she is Full Professor in Industrial Bioengineering at the Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano. She was visiting Master and PhD student at the Joint Research Centre, Institute for Advanced Materials, Ispra (VA), Italy, and at the University of Laval and Quebec Biomaterials Institute, Quebec, Canada. She is/was Member of Scientific or Organizing Committee at National and International Congresses. From January 2018 she is Editor in Chief for the Journal of Applied Biomaterials and Functional Materials (Sage Ed.). In 2017 she was elected as President of the Italian Society for Biomaterials (SIB) and she is member of the Council, as Treasurer, of the European Society for Biomaterials. The scientific activity of Silvia Farè has been devoted to different areas related to the bioengineering applications and Research activity is carried out in collaboration with National and International Universities and Research Centers, and National and International industries. Her main research interests: characterization of design, synthesis and characterization of synthetic and natural polymer-based scaffolds for tissue engineering, in particular for 3D in vitro models of soft and hard tissue, and drug release applications; development of polymer matrices for biomimetic composites; design and characterization of shape memory polymer device and scaffolds for a mini-invasive surgical approach; elastomers for cardio-vascular applications. Silvia Farè is author and co-authors of one hundred international and national scientific publications related to the biomaterial and regenerative medicine fields. The H index of Silvia Farè Scientific Production calculated by Scopus in December 2023 is ranking 39.
Expertise
Research activities are mainly devoted to the biomedical field and can be summarized in three main areas:
i. Modifying the material structure and/or surface with the appropriate approach to tune final material properties;
ii. Understanding fundamental properties of stimulus-responsive polymeric materials, as platform to design innovative biomedical solutions;
iii. Designing and synthesizing novel polymeric materials and approaches for regenerative medicine applications.
In particular, in the last years her research activity is focused on the development of new natural-based biomaterials and stimuli-responsive biomaterials, that can be used for the realization of scaffold per the regeneration of soft tissues and for the design of new 3D scaffold-based in vitro models for the investigation of cancer development and the investigation of novel therapeutic approaches. In addition, her focus is also devoted to the development of new process techniques to obtain 3D natural polymer structures.
Fabiana ZAMA obtained my BSc in Mathematics in December 1987 from the University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
Employment Background: Since October 2006, I have been serving as an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Bologna, Italy. Prior to this, from October 1991 to 2006, I worked as a Researcher in the same department.
Areas of Interest. My research interests include numerical regularization methods for inverse problems, numerical optimization methods in parameter identification problems, numerical methods in the evolution of epidemics, nuclear magnetic resonance inversion algorithms, and numerical methods in magnetic resonance imaging.
Research Projects Coordination. I was the Scientific Coordinator for Bologna University of the FIRB Project on "Parallel Algorithms and non-linear numerical optimization" from 2002 to 2004, with Prof. V. Ruggiero as the National Coordinator. I also served as the local coordinator for the research unit at the University of Bologna in the European project NMR-IMPROV, which aims to improve and protect the quality of dairy products through NMR relaxation tools.
My editorial activity includes working on the MDPI "Inverse Problems and Imaging" Special Issue and serving as an Academic Editor for Plos One. I have supervised PhD projects on mathematical models and numerical methods for environmental applications of Fast Field Cycling Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Additionally, I have been involved in teaching activities in the training school COST Action IG15209, organizing mini-symposiums such as the First PON Seminars day with Prof. M. Porcelli in May 2022, and co-organizing "NMR Applications: Inverse Problems and Methods" with Prof. V. Bortolotti in 2019. I have also participated in conferences as an invited speaker, discussing topics such as the characterization of cement pastes by 1H NMR and non-convex optimization for sparse MRI.
How to submit your article
All submissions must be original and may not be under review by another publisher. Interested authors should consult the journal’s “Submission Guidelines” at https://www.springer.com/journal/42558/submission-guidelines (this opens in a new tab)
Articles can be submitted through Editorial Manager: https://www.editorialmanager.com/mosm/default.aspx (this opens in a new tab)
The special issue is created as submission questionnaire in the system. When you submit your paper you will be asked if your paper belongs to a special issue. If you answer yes, a pull down menu prompts up where you can select the title of the special issue to which you are submitting your paper.
Please indicate in your cover letter that you wish your manuscript to be considered for the special issue on " Mechanics, manufacturing, and applications of active soft materials and structures ". All submitted papers will be reviewed as soon as they are received. Accepted papers are published Online First until the complete Special Issue is published.